Description: An animated gif (very slow animation, no flicker) shwowing a (mocked up) difficulty selection screen from a video game.It cycles through "Medium", "Hard", "Impossible", "Skip combat" and "Easy", while the description box to the right says "Play the game as it was meant to be played.", no matter which difficulty is selected.

Something that's shockingly easy to miss if you grew up in a context where the term for "tabletop roleplaying game" was "D&D":

Dungeons and Dragons is actually a fairly specific system aiming to create a particular kind of game.

Yes, DMs and players have a titanic amount of influence over what the game feels like - the campaigns I've been in have included "travel from adventure to adventure", "periodically get the team together to solve a problem through puzzle-solving and moxie", "fantasy XCOM in Greyhawk-esque colonialist Appalachians", "fantasy post-apoc Earth with pop culture jokes" (my character in that one is a sorcerer who channels her power through the ancient picture-characters known as Emoji)...

...but D&D assumes:

- Combat is a big part of the story and character builds.- The capabilities of characters ramps up from "similarly competent to mundane humans" to, at /minimum/, "kick 80-foot-tall giants in the knee and trip them".- Commoners are almost powerless against any adventurers above a very low level.- The DM has full control over the diegetic universe and the limits of what players are allowed to attempt to do.- Challenges should be frequently resolved by random chance.- The pivotal events of the world happen at the scale of a dozen people or so at a time.- The game follows the characters from past into future.- The progression of the characters' arcs should definitely include gaining wealth, both in specie and in rare items.- There are cosmic forces acting on ideological motives trying to change the world to conform specifically to their image of it.

And yes, there are ways to work around those things ... but the game assumes these things.

It's not a generic system. I haven't even touched on all the ways it's not a generic system. It's something specific with advantages and disadvantages.

And so it doesn't need to be anyone's default. It can just be an option. And people can prefer other options.

Wired, 2019: YOU'RE IN PRIVATE MODE. To continue using a private window, sign in or subscribe. The title of the article being denied reads "It's Time to Switch to a Privacy Browser. Ad trackers are out of control".

- expensive if you don’t wanna ruin your hair-difficult to achieve for many people of color- impossible to achieve for many with hair loss, including trans people, chronically ill queers, queers with trich, etc-inaccessible for many who do jobs in the service industry- So: easiest for white cis abled queers with money

Which doesn’t mean you can’t have blue hair. But we need to rethink the social function it has in our spaces

This is the 18th anniversary of the day that vast swaths of the United States and Europe turned against a religion with a billion+ members - and anyone who *looks* like they *might* be a member of that religion, creating more than a billion ADDITIONAL victims of bigotry - because of the actions of 19 men who were members of a fringe cult of that religion.

Support your Muslim, Middle-Eastern, and/or Indian and Pakistani friends today.

Personally, my Google last straw was the day at work in Manhattan when I got a push notification just before lunch time letting me know I hadn’t been to one of my favorite taco spots in awhile.

For me, it seems obvious that there is a big fat line between using something to aid in navigating the world around me and having that same thing try and permeate and manipulate those interactions.

Obviously, in many respects, this is what Google’s internet is at its core; but, I was naive and thought different of my phone, at least until that point. I thought I had control over what I saw and from whom I heard on my phone because, well, it’s my goddamn phone lol.

are some of them unethically made? yes, they are - capitalism is a hellscape, some of everything is unethically made

are some of them absolute ripoffs? yes, they are - many con artists are eager to defraud desperate people who really can't afford it because desperate people both have less ability to detect fraud and less ability to seek redress for being wronged

but if you ever look at something and think, "but all you have to do is--" then immediately stop and ask yourself what kinds of disabilities might make whatever remedy just came to mind impossible, because there's probably something

* Use filters liberally to remove posts that annoys you* Mute or block other people or bots who get boosted into your timeline if you don't want to see them again * Try to remember to not click on CW's for stuff that will leave you feeling worse * Unfollow

Remember to ask the young adults in your life if they've registered to vote and to sort it urgently if they're not.Politely walk them through the process of registering and voting and why it's vitally important if needed and be helpful and empowering rather than preachy and attacking:https://www.gov.uk/register-to-voteWe've soon got the opportunity for an admittedly far from perfect socialist government. Much rather that than the fascist shitshow we've sleepwalked into though.

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